kings of the natural order
by luova tauko
Summary: Kubota didn't have much of a plan beyond kill them all, take back what's mine, but he's good at improvising. Kubota/Tokito


**kings of the natural order**

_Kubota didn't have much of a plan beyond _kill them all, take back what's mine_, but he's good at improvising._  
[Kubota/Tokito - set right after volume 6, references to canon violence - a Yuletide 2011 fic for stefy_coool]

{&}

The boat Kou promised to send is in time. It's a small one, nothing more than a dinghy with a motor and a man to steer it, but it's there. Kubota is grateful: the numbers were against him, after all, and a less honest man than Kou might have decided to not send it at all. Or maybe it's just that Kou knows him, knows Tokito and what Kubota would do for him.

The man asks, "You the guys I should pick up?" Kubota is pretty sure that he has a gun on the boat just in case they aren't.

Tokito opens his mouth and since Kubota _is_ sure of what he'd say, he covers Tokito's mouth with his hand. It's better to not agitate a man with a gun when there are no witnesses around. Tokito bites his palm, not hard enough to leave marks but hard enough to make his displeasure known. "Yeah," Kubota says. "Get on board, Tokito."

It's dark and Kubota doesn't have his glasses, but he can still feel Tokito's glare. "Or I could go first and you'd have to stay longer in the water. Kou-san probably has something for the cold you'd get."

"Okay, fine! You don't have to be _mean_ about it." The man doesn't offer a hand to pull Tokito up, but that doesn't matter. Tokito is strong and agile enough, even with his mangled hands, and thinking of that makes Kubota feel viciously satisfied for all the men he killed.

_They _killed, and that sudden thought almost weighs him down.

"Come on, Kubo-chan! We don't have all night." Tokito's reaching down though, to grab his hands and haul him up, and pulling the trigger was Tokito's choice. This is another one and because Kubota knows that Tokito makes the right choices for both of them, he reaches up and lets Tokito pull him out of the freezing cold.

{&}

This part of the city is bright and lively even in the middle of the night. _Especially_ in the middle of the night, Kubota thinks with wry amusement. The things that happen behind the doors are either dancing on the fine line of law or straight up illegal, much like Tokito and Kubota himself. People glance at them as they pass by but nobody's eyes linger and no one makes eye contact. It's safer like that and anyway, the city can offer more interesting sights than two drenched young men wading through the crowded streets.

"Where are we going?"

Kubota didn't have much of a plan beyond _kill them all, take back what's mine_ but he's good at improvising. They can't go back home, he doesn't want to drag Kasai or Takizawa into this mess and right now it's better to stay out of Kou's place too. Tokito would agree if Kubota would say that aloud.

"Hmm, I was thinking… a love motel," he says instead, partly because it's true but mostly because he knows what it will do to Tokito.

"Kubo-chan!" Tokito stops abruptly and colour blooms on his face, spreading from his cheekbones to the tip of his chin and almost covering the bruises and cuts, and it's much better than the deathly pallor. He's a second away from shouting and while that's always entertaining, this isn't the place for that.

"It's safer," Kubota says quickly and he can't help touching Tokito's hand. There's not much space between them, not with the pressure of the crowd, but even that feels too much. Tokito's right hand is in his coat pocket, clenched into a fist if Kubota knows him at all and he _does_, and then he pulls the other one from Kubota's.

"Right," Tokito says as Kubota's arm drops and hangs uselessly at his side. Kubota doesn't know what kind of face he makes but it has to be very telling because Tokito rolls his eyes and continues, "Stop being stupid, Kubo-chan. It hurts, that's all. Pick a place and let's go."

"Ah," Kubota says. He hadn't forgotten, not really, and now it occurs to him that they'll need supplies. For Tokito's hands and face and everything, and maybe for Kubota's shoulder too. "That's true."

{&}

Kubota could have chosen a prettier place than this, but he ignores the gaudy furnishing easily enough. It's cheap and it has a bed and a shower, and that's all they need for the moment. Kubota knows he could survive without them, too, as long as he has Tokito. If the night had ended differently, there'd be another corpse floating in the harbour with a bullet hole on its head.

"Shower, Kubo-chan." Tokito shoves Kubota across the dim room one stiff step after another. The bathroom light is blinding bright and Tokito's face is like a dirty canvas splashed with blues and reds, justifying every murder Kubota has ever committed. "Take your clothes off."

"I thought _I _was the pervert," Kubota says, shrugging the coat off his shoulders and letting it slide to the floor. It's not like it matters right now and Tokito's coat is already there.

Tokito snorts and turns around. "Damn right you are, but you look like you'll keel over if I leave you alo- _Kubo-chan_!" His expression is all wrong, shock and horror and worry all mixed together in a cocktail Kubota has worked hours to undo. He shouldn't look like that here and it makes Kubota tense and ill that he does. "You're bleeding!"

Oh, right. Kubota wills his muscles to relax because Tokito is all right and he's also right, Kubota _is_ bleeding through his shirt. It was irrelevant before and it still doesn't hurt too much. Kubota twists his neck to look down at his shoulder. At one point or another, the stitches Kou had so carefully applied must have torn and now Kubota's shirt is sticky and red and clinging to his skin.

"I was shot."

Tokito is close, closer than he was out there in the open street, and his hands are on Kubota's shirt buttons. The narrow cuts are deep but at least they're not bleeding, and maybe they're not aching too badly anymore either because Tokito isn't complaining. Or maybe they do hurt, Kubota isn't sure because he doesn't know what Tokito is thinking, can't read him at all. "Did you kill him? The guy who did it?"

"Yes," Kubota says and _then_ he knows what he's seeing because he's been feeling it ever since they got off the ship.

"_Good_."

{&}

Kubota counts the flamingos on the god-awful wallpaper and doesn't flinch at all as Tokito pokes his shoulder. The bleeding has stopped but the bullet hole itself is ugly, dark thread ends sticking out of Kubota's flesh around the wound. The bathroom floor is littered with wet and bloody towels and Kubota knows he should clean it up, but Tokito is too insisting and distracting.

"Can you call that quack?" He's also wrapping bandages around Kubota's shoulder with great care, like he's afraid that Kubota will fall apart if he's too rough-handed. Maybe he will, or maybe Tokito's gentle touch will break him instead. "You need new stitches."

"Not right now." And maybe not ever, it might be for the best to sever all ties he has with his past, just in case this happens again. Kubota is too tired to think of anything but what's right in front of him, and Tokito nods and he can probably stitch it too, if Kubota will talk him through it. "Tokito. Are you okay?"

Kubota doesn't mean the bruises and cuts marring Tokito's skin and they both know it, and there isn't any need to pretend that they don't. Tokito's eyes are dark and deep and he's almost close enough, breathing the same air with Kubota. "Yeah. Monsters are made of tough stuff and I'm the toughest of them all."

He _is _because Kubota is a monster too, and he knows precisely how brittle he is. He'd kill a thousand men for Tokito's sake but he wouldn't live a day without him, not really. Tokito is alive and warm, the beginnings of rough stubble on his jaw and both smooth and broken skin on his neck and shoulders, and he has more truth in his fingertips than Kubota has in his whole body. Tokito's heart is strong under his ribs and Kubota flattens his palms against Tokito's chest to feel it better, closes his eyes then and presses his ear against Tokito to hear the steady beat.

Tokito twines his fingers into Kubota's hair, the beast hand sliding down Kubota's naked back and leaving warmth in its wake, and says softly, "Let's sleep, Kubo-chan."

{&}

_Kings are in the moral order what monsters are in the natural._  
Henri Gregoire


End file.
